“Hey,” Kai greeted as he sat down next to Cara at one of the tables in the library. He had found her in the very back of the study area after her last class of the day ended in the afternoon, and she was miffed that he had still managed to find her. Second round of exams had just ended, and she was excited to take a break to relax and catch up on sleep, so she had decided to get ahead in her homework assignments.

Usually, she would come here to do her work or just to be alone to read for a while, but the fact that Kai had found her in this massive library meant that he had either asked Lisa where she was, or he had picked up on her habits easily. Even so, she looked up from her homework assignment with a small smile, and honestly, Cara was sick of this. She was sick of looking at Kai and not feeling immediate annoyance towards him. Ever since their slight heart-to-heart at the Halloween party, she had to muster up almost a fake bravado with him to mask her softening feelings. If he had ever found out that she was letting him get to her, she’d never live it down.

“Did you get your exam back for stats?” he asked, setting his elbows down on the table and leaning in towards her. Cara paused as the fragrance of his ocean scented cologne wafted over to her, and she had to force herself to breathe normally instead of inhaling the scent like it was crack.

“Yeah, why?” she asked, pausing her typing and turning to look at him, their bodies angled towards each other. Like her, he was wearing a sweatshirt, except his sweatshirt looked like it was one of those designer sweatshirts. That’s because it probably was a designer brand one.

He didn’t have anything with him, which made her wonder if he had left his apartment for the sole purpose of searching her out. They hadn’t texted much since the party since exam season had started up, but Thanksgiving was next Thursday, so maybe he wanted to talk about that. Besides the exam, of course.

“What did you get?” he eagerly asked for a mischievous smile on his face that only meant trouble for her, and then there were moments like these where she didn’t have to force her annoyance towards him.

Cara rolled her eyes and turned back to her assignment, “It’s none of your business.” Why she was even taking statistics as a cyber security major was beyond her, but Cian forced her into it for an elective course.

“Well, as your caring and devoted boyfriend, I feel like I should keep up with how you are doing academically in this fine university.”

“I’m doing just fine, thank you, dear boyfriend,” she responded, pressing down on the keys of her laptop harder than necessary because she knew that he wasn’t going to let it go. Letting things go on the first try when it came to academics wasn’t in his blood, and she supposed she understood why, but that didn’t make him any less infuriating.

“Oh, but sweet Cara, I’d like to know that you’re passing your classes with absolutely stellar grades.” She shut her eyes for a moment, praying to Barbatos for patience that she was quickly running out of.

“For God's’ sake, Kai, I got a 94,” she finally blurted out, turning to look at him. Kai’s face lit up with almost a child-like glee, and suddenly his nickname made a lot more sense. She sighed as she prepared herself for the oncoming teasing.

What she wasn’t expecting, however, was his big grin softening into something that she was noticing was a rare smile from him. It wasn’t something that took over his face entirely, but rather a soft crinkling of his eyes as his lips tipped up slightly.

“Good job,” Kai spoke sweetly, and it wasn’t as though he were being sarcastic either. He sounded genuinely happy for her, and she hated that it immediately dimmed the flame of annoyance that had been roaring inside of her. While she knew her feelings towards him were becoming more amicable, maybe Kai was feeling the same way towards her.

Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Cara gave up.

“Okay, come on,” she started, turning her body towards him yet again, “let me hear it.”

“Hear what?” he asked, turning his head towards the side as though he were a little puppy.

A clingy, frustrating, adorable puppy.

“How you did better than me,” she clarified. She waved a hand around, silently telling him to get on with it.

Kai shrugged as he ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, I got a 95. It’s not that much better.”

Cara blinked at him a few times, wondering if she had heard him correctly. “You’ve held half a point over my head before,” she pointed out incredulously.

He shrugged again, and she pressed a hand down on his shoulder to stop him from doing that again. “Seriously, it’s not that big of a deal,” he insisted.

“Are you okay? Do you have a fever?” she asked, pressing her free hand’s back to his forehead. He didn’t feel that warm, but then again, her hands could just be warm, so she wouldn’t feel his forehead overheating.

“Cara, stop, I’m not sick!” he pushed her hands off of him with a laugh. “If my mom even gets a whiff of my potential of being sick, she won’t let me come back to campus after break.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’ll be there to tell her on Thanksgiving, huh?”

“Oh my god,” he groaned, running his hand through his hair again. Cara smacked his hand away, this time.

“Stop doing that, idiot,” she chastised, raising her own hand to fix his hair. It looked like a bird’s nest with the way it was practically a floating halo over his head. It was such an instinctive action that she hadn’t even realized that she was so close to him and touching his hair until she heard Kai sharply inhale. While she could feel her face burning, she was committed to seeing the action through. Cara didn’t half- things, and this certainly would not be one of those things, even if she wanted to jump off a bridge.

It also didn’t really help that she wanted to keep feeling his hair under her fingertips. It was soft, and her brain unintentionally brought about questions regarding how his hair would feel if she were tugging on it to bring him closer.

Blinking hard, Cara pulled away from him and tried to smile, although she wouldn’t be surprised if it were more of a grimace. “See? There.”

“Uh,” Kai started, before he blinked a few times himself as though he were clearing his mind, “do you want to go out for coffee?”

Cara’s eyebrows furrowed as she pondered the question. “Randomly?”

“I mean, we are dating, no? We could go on a date.”

“I can’t believe I have to ask you this every time, but you are aware that we’re not actually dating, yes?”

“Yes, I am aware, Cara. I’m literally offering to buy you coffee, and you are still being annoying.”

“I’m a quick learner, and besides, I’ve had such a great teacher,” she responded with a sweet smile. She heard him snort as she turned back to her laptop to save her work and shut it off before slipping it into her bag. As her eyes drifted to the library past her laptop, she suddenly came to the realization that they were basically flirting in public.

They were being convincing, but maybe the two of them were a little too convincing for her own heart.

“Come on,” she urged, standing up.

“You’re in a rush to get out,” he laughed, also standing up. “I thought you would like to give them another show?” Kai asked, jerking his head slightly towards the rest of the library. There weren't many people in the library, but she could see eyes on them before quickly turning away. Clearly he had also noticed what she had, but she refused to back down, especially after the opening he’d given her. She wouldn’t give up the chance to mess with him, and besides, she was just doing what he asked her to do when they started this charade.

Cara smiled and leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek softly, feeling a slight stubble scrape against her lips. She took satisfaction in the way his lips parted and laughed out loud when he simply grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the library without any more words.

~~~

“How do you even drink that garbage? Plus it’s actually cold out. Why not get a hot drink instead?” Kai asked, wrinkling his nose. Cara pushed open the door to Angel’s Share Cafe for the both of them with a happy sigh as she took a long sip of her iced pumpkin spice latte. The New York air was becoming more and more chilly as November was here, but she didn’t care.

“It’s seasonal, get over it. I drink it for the mood, not because I particularly enjoy it. Also, there’s no such thing as hot coffee for me.”

He sent her a withering glance as he held up his own cup of coffee — a caramel macchiato. “Then you could’ve made me pay for something cheaper.”

“Not an option. Besides, I won’t judge if you’re gorging yourself on peppermint a month from now. In fact, the peppermint hot chocolate is already selling like hotcakes at Starbucks,”

“Yeah because you’d be stuffing yourself with peppermint too. Also, never say hotcakes again.”

“I’m glad we agree on something.”

“What? The hotcakes or the peppermint?” he asked with a laugh. She elbowed him the best she could while they were walking and holding drinks, and she let out a satisfied cackle when he hissed in pain.

“Damn it, woman, why do you have such pointy elbows?!”

“It’s a gift. And I was referring to the peppermint, .”

Kai looked thoughtful for a moment as he sipped on his coffee before he responded. “I mean, considering we haven’t murdered each other yet, I’d say that we’re on the track to agreeing about quite a bit.”

Cara hummed as she took another sip of her drink. She looked up at Kai before asking him, “Can we talk about what I should expect at the dinner on Thursday?”

“Sure. I have a mother and a father—”

“Obviously,” Cara cut in.

“And,” Kai continued, pretending as though she had never spoken, “I have three younger siblings. Arin is the oldest out of them, Insu is next, and then Taein is the youngest.” He had the soft smile on his face again, and Cara mentally started cataloguing all the instances that it had graced his face.

“Wow, how is it that the oldest child of the family acts like a five-year old?” Cara teased, and she yelped when Kai pinched her waist through her sweatshirt. “Hey!”

“If you can elbow me all you want, I get to retaliate.”

“That’s not how this relationship works,” Cara protested as she rubbed a hand over the area that he pinched her.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “I could retaliate in other ways, but I don’t think you’d approve.”

“Ignorance is bliss, I suppose,” she sighed and promptly changed the subject. The underlying suggestive tone of his statement wasn’t lost on her, but she was in no way ready to even broach the subject of the between the two that only increased ever since their fake dating charade had begun. She was feeling like they had just entered the friendship category, and she had no intentions of changing that. “You seem to really care about your siblings,” she pointed out instead.

“I do. I haven’t seen them nearly enough because of the age difference, especially between me and Taein, but they’re my world. I moved out for boarding school when I was 14, and then moved out for college, so I haven’t really spent as much time with Taein as I would like.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s 11. Arin is 19, and Insu is 15.”

“That must be really nice,” she responded, “to have such a big family.”

Cara saw Kai look down at her out of the corner of her eyes, and she kept her eyes firmly on the ground in front of her.

“It’s alright. It’s definitely chaotic, and I love living alone, especially because I’ve been on my own for seven years, but yeah. I’m lucky to have my family. You have one too, you know.”

Cara pursed her lips as she considered what he said. “Sort of,” she agreed. “I do have Cian, and he’s enough.”

Kai snorted, and that made her turn towards him angrily. She knew he was a , but to make fun of her lack of family? That was downright cruel.

“That’s not what I meant,” he quickly clarified as they stopped walking. People started walking around them, sending the two strange looks, and Cara ignored all of that as she glared at him. “I just mean that you have more to your family than just Cian. A family isn’t just whoever you’re biologically related to, it’s also your friends. Misty’s part of your family, and I’m sure that my family will love you.”

“That doesn’t really mean anything,” Cara quietly responded as she turned back to continue walking. Kai quickly caught up to her.

“Sure it does,” he argued. “It means the world to have a support system, and it doesn’t matter where it comes from. You have Cian, Misty, and me, and I always had my mom and Zach.”

Cara noticed that he hadn’t mentioned that he had her support, but she supposed she deserved to not be inc